Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine depicts Jewish dean with bloody utensils
A student group at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law published an anti-Semitic cartoon depicting the school's dean, who is Jewish, holding bloody utensils over a dinner table, a version of the ancient
blood libel employed in anti-Semitic propaganda that accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children for baking matzah and other rituals.
Berkeley's chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine posted a cartoon depicting law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky holding a fork and knife dripping with blood over a dinner table, with the caption "No Dinner With Zionist Chem While Gaza Starves!" The graphic, which was posted on Monday, was deleted approximately half an hour later, but the
Washington Free Beacon obtained a screenshot. Shortly after, the cartoon was
reposted, but without blood covering the utensils.
The Instagram post came in response to an email from Chemerinsky last week inviting third-year law students to eat dinner in his home, according to the Law Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. The group is
led by Malak Afaneh, a third-year Berkeley law student who has
commended Palestinians for their "active resistance against the apartheid state of Israel."
"This dinner is the prime example of a normalization PR event that hopes to distract students from Dean Chem's complicity and support for the genocide of the Palestinian peoples," the group said in a caption under the cartoon. "While Dean Chem wants to wine and dine his students, he continues to approve of UC investments into weapons companies like Blackrock, Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop, and more."
Law Students for Justice in Palestine encouraged students to boycott "all of Chemerinsky's events" and demand that Berkeley divest "from ALL TIES to the apartheid state of Israel." Berkeley Law School declined to comment. Chemerinsky did not return a request for comment.
The grotesque cartoon comes after the House Committee on Education and the Workforce
announced last month that it was requesting internal documents regarding Berkeley's response to the outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus.
Afaneh started at Berkeley Law in 2021, according to her LinkedIn
profile. One year later, she shared her desire to use her law degree to aid the Palestinians in their "battle for liberation."
"For years, Palestinians everywhere have engaged in active resistance against the apartheid state of Israel," Afaneh wrote in a 2022 Facebook
post. "As a lawyer, I hope to aid in this battle for liberation, so that I and generations to come may see a Palestine free from the river to the sea."
Another student, Matt Fernandes, is a member of and organizer with Berkeley's Law Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2022, Fernandes promoted a
bylaw that amended the group's constitution to include a ban on pro-Israel speakers from participating in club events. He also
accused Zionists of holding "positions of power" with "connections to media," according to anti-Semitism watchdog Canary Mission.
Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine did not respond to a request for comment.
The
Free Beacon in a Feb. 1 report unearthed a similar cartoon at the University of Pennsylvania. Dwayne Booth, a lecturer at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication, published a slew of anti-Semitic cartoons, including one that depicts Zionists sipping Gazan blood from wineglasses.
